Child malnutrition in Jamaica extends far beyond schools, with over half the population facing food insecurity and more than a quarter experiencing severe hunger. Many children lack access to consistent, nutritious meals, leading to stunted growth and developmental setbacks. While school feeding programmes provide some relief, the issue requires a broader national approach that includes improving household food security and reducing food waste. With Jamaica wasting over 243,000 tonnes of food annually, experts urge the Government to implement stronger policies that connect surplus food with families in need. 

Feeding hungry students

Jamaica Gleaner/12 Mar 2025

DESPITE THE absence so far of full details, including specific numbers, of the Government’s expanded school feeding programme for the new fiscal year, the conviction with which Dana Morris Dixon speaks of the urgency of addressing hunger among large swathes of Jamaican students is encouraging.

Last week, she told Parliament’s Standing Finance Committee that 256 schools –189 primary and 56 secondary – where children are poorer and perform below their peers, have been earmarked for a special nutrition programme.

“We’ve seen where a number of our children are coming to school without any breakfast,” the education minister said. “We’ve seen that for those schools that provide lunch and [the children] are on PATH [Programme of Advancement through Health and Education, a cash transfer programme for poor families], that is the only meal they may have. So, we’ve had to be very realistic as a ministry and we’ve looked at that and we recognise that we have to do better.”

It is not clear if this also means that additional numbers of children will be assured of a hot meal at school, or if the budget for the initiative has an ironclad guarantee.

BROADER CAMPAIGN

According to the Government’s recently tabled expenditure document, J$8.98 billion has been allocated for schools’ nutritional support for the financial year starting April 1. That is J$792 million, or 10 per cent, above the expected turnout for 2024-25.

However, the new fiscal year’s school feeding budget is only J$67 million (three-quarters of one per cent) more than what was initially approved for 2024-25, until over $700 million was chopped in subsequent revisions. Moreover, the current allocation is two-and-half per cent below what was spent on nutritional support in schools in 2023-24.

That is why The Gleaner, while it has no doubts about Minister Morris Dixon’s deeper appreciation of the nexus between nutrition/ hunger and learning, or to ensuring that students are adequately fed, believes that she owes the public further and better particulars about the initiative. These must include the numbers to be fed; the systems to ensure that the money is efficiently spent; and the expected outcomes from this project. She might also wish to pledge to fight to the hilt not only to protect the programme should it be earmarked for spending cuts, but push in the Cabinet – where the former education minister, Fayval Williams, is now in charge of the Treasury – for more money for its expansion.

Additionally, Dr Morris Dixon might consider parlaying the school feeding initiative into a broader campaign of nutritional support for poor children, that is tied into efforts to reduce food waste in Jamaica. She might think, too, about how the billions of dollars the Government spends on school feeding could become a catalyst for accelerating agricultural production in Jamaica.

The science of the impact of nutrition on early brain development is well known, as is the fact that hungry children are unlikely to either concentrate or pay attention in classrooms. And indeed, many Jamaican children are hungry and undernourished.

DELETERIOUS EFFECT

A recent report by a group of UN agencies on food insecurity in Latin America and the Caribbean found that in the 2021-2023 period, over half (55 per cent) of Jamaicans were moderately to severely food-insecure, periodically lacking access to safe and nutritious food. For more than a quarter of the population (26.6 per cent), the food insecurity was severe.

Expressed another way, the data, according to the Pan-american Health Organization and the other authors of the study, translated to 1.6 million Jamaicans facing some level of food insecurity, contributing to 6.5 per cent of children under five being stunted, and 5.7 per cent are overweight.

There is no readily accessible empirical data on how food insecurity affects school attendance or education outcomes in the island, but Minister Morris Dixon, like many other people in and out of the education sector, is clear about its deleterious effect.

This issue of food insecurity causing parents to keep children from school, and of hunger affecting how children perform in the classroom, is not new. Jamaica’s Government has run a school feeding programme for decades, although its adequacy has apparently never been sufficient for the scale of the problem.

Twenty-seven years ago, a study, reported by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, stated that “the provision of breakfast to Jamaican schoolchildren in grade 7 for one semester resulted in higher school attendance and greater achievement in arithmetic”.

Noting that poverty often led to low school attendance, the report observed a correlation between the provision of meals, school attendance and outcomes.

“The implication is that the provision of the meal resulted in improved scholastic achievement, which was independent of school attendance and weight gain,” that 1998 report said. “It was therefore hypothesised that the alleviation of hunger during school hours was a valid reason for the improvement in arithmetic.”

These children are hungry in an environment of significant food waste. The United Nations Environment Programme’s 2024 report on global food waste found that in Jamaica, households annually waste over 243,000 tonnes of food, much of it reaching landfills. Household per capita food waste was 86 kilos in 2022.

How might some of the food that otherwise goes to waste be steered to the kitchens of the island’s schools? Perhaps that is something to think about.

For feedback: contact the Editorial Department at onlinefeedback@gleanerjm.com.